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For those of you who do not know me, I am a military wife. My husband has been in the Navy for almost 10 years. (Still can't believe it has been that long!) He is a corpsman (a medic basically). As a navy man you would think that he would spend his time on a ship. Well you would be wrong! I didn't know this either when he first entered the military but as a corpsman you can get stationed with the marines. That is what happened to my husband right out of boot camp and ever since. He has been to Iraq three times now and just finished his fourth deployment a couple of months ago which was his first ship deployment. It's is so good to have him home!
Now the reason I tell you this is because I have had lots of practice making welcome home signs. Every deployment my signs get better and better. This last homecoming was definitely my best! I am going to share with you how easy it can be. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the process but its simple enough. Here is a preview of one side.....
Nice right? I know it looks complicated but its not! It just takes time and patience. The only things you need are foam board, scrapbook paper of your choice of color, stencils and glue! That's it! I picked up all my supplies at Micheals for pretty cheap. You can choose whichever letter size and style you like. As for the glue, i just used clear Elmer's glue.
Now comes the time consuming part. I traced each letter out on the scrapbook paper. A good tip is to flip the letters over backwards so that you don't have to worry about cutting on the inside lines. The lines will be on the back when you glue the letters down. Here is a picture of me laying the letters out.
The best thing to do is to cut out all the letters of the saying you want, and lay them down before gluing to make sure everything lines up. Once you do that, then you just glue everything down! Like I said, time consuming but well worth the effort. Your sign will look clean and professional.
These pictures are half way through the process. Some of the words aren't glued down yet buts its easier to make everything straight if you lay it all out and then glue. I didn't have an anchor stencil so I just looked online for a good shape, printed it out, cut it out, and used that as my template.
The other trick I did was to utilize BOTH sides of your foam board! One side was personal to my husband and the other was a fun little saying for his unit. Same principle with a different stencil. For this one I also went online and found his unit sign and symbols and printed them off of my computer, cut them around the edges and voila! I actually think my husband liked that side better haha.
It was a great project and got me excited for my husbands return. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and tips and that you create your own wonderful signs to welcome your loved ones home. =)
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